Practical exercise
Find the origin of one viral SMS or WhatsApp claim
You will pick one viral message that has been doing rounds in Pakistan, follow it back as far as you can to its first source, and write a short note for the next person who forwards it to you. The skill of tracing a claim is more useful than any opinion you can hold about it.
30 min·starter
Now try it
Find the origin of one viral SMS or WhatsApp claim
Stretch
Build a small spreadsheet titled traced-claims with one row per claim you trace over the next month. Columns: claim, source, fact checker verdict, your verdict. After ten rows, patterns appear about which channels lie most.
Goes into your portfolio
The note source-trace-NN with the claim, evidence trail, and final verdict, plus the reusable WhatsApp reply saved as reply-template-NN.